I'm an Associate Professor and Academy of Finland Fellow at the
University of Helsinki
in the
Department of Computer Science.
I lead the
Compressed Data Structures group, and am
a member of the
Algorithmic Bioinformatics and the
Practical Algorithms and Data Structures on Strings groups.
Prior to that I was a Newton Fellow in the Algorithms and Bioinformatics group
at
King's College London, and earlier
still I held an Australian Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Search Engine Group
at
RMIT.
My current research focuses on efficient
algorithms and data structures for searching, storing, and manipulating strings, trees and graphs,
and applications thereof (like bioinformatics, information retrieval, database systems, and data mining).
I obtained my PhD from Curtin University, Western Australia, under the supervision of
Bill Smyth and
Andrew Turpin.
Selected (+ Recent) Publications
A fairly complete list is at
DBLP.
And then there is also
Google Scholar.
Research Activities
I am Associate Editor at the
ACM Journal of Experimental Algorithmics.
I am on the steering committee of SPIRE, the annual Symposium on String Processing and Information Retrieval.
I am on the steering committee of
DSB, the annual Workshop on Data Structures for Bioinformatics.
I am PC co-chair (with Filippo Bonchi) of
MFCS 2021 to be held in beautiful Tallinn.
I am on the programme committee for IMSB/ECCB 2021
I was on the programme committee for
SPIRE 2020 and ALENEX 2021.
I was on the programme committee for
WALCOM 2020,
SEA 2020,
FUN 2020, and
ISMB 2020.
I was PC co-chair (with Nieves Brisaboa) of
SPIRE 2019, held in beautiful Segovia, 7-10 October, 2019.
I was on the programme committee for
CPM 2019.
I gave a keynote talk at
SEA 2018, the 17th International Symposium on Experimental Algorithms, in L'Aquila, 27-29 June, 2018.
I was on the programme committee for
ESA 2018,
IWOCA 2018, and
WALCOM 2018.
I organised (with Veli Mäkinen) the
4th Workshop on Data Structures on Bioinformatics, May 16-17, 2018.
Here is a news item about it.
I organised (with Hideo Bannai and Yasuo Tabei)
String Masters in Tokyo, October 13, 16, and 17, 2017.
I gave a keynote talk at
PSC 2017, the annual Prague Stringology Conference, 28-30 August, 2017.
I was PC co-chair (with Rajeev Raman and Solon Pissis) of
SEA 2017, held in wonderful London, June 21-23, 2017.
I was co-chair (with Yasuo Tabei) of
WCTA 2016, which was a satellite to SPIRE in Japan.
I was PC co-chair (with Veli Mäkinen) of
IWOCA 2016, which was held in Helsinki, August 17-19, 2016.
I gave a keynote talk at
MatBio 2016, the 1st Conference on Mathematical Foundations of Bioinformatics, in London, July 20, 2016.
I was PC co-chair (with Emine Yilmaz and Costas Iliopoulos) of
SPIRE 2015 in London in autumn 2015.
I was co-chair (with Costas Iliopoulos and Maxime Crochemore) of the
Royal Society meeting on Storage and Indexing of Massive Data, February 7-8, 2013. Here is a
group photo.
I was co-Chair (with
Golnaz Badkobeh) of the organizing committee for
LSD 2012.
I was on the programme committee for
CPM 2017,
IWOCA 2017,
CIBB 2017,
SPIRE 2017,
SPIRE 2016,
CPM 2015,
IWOCA 2015,
SEA 2014,
SPIRE 2014,
SEA 2013,
IWOCA 2013,
SPIRE 2012,
IWOCA 2012,
CPM 2011,
IWOCA 2011,
IWOCA 2010,
CIKM 2009, and
SPIRE 2008.
I was on the organizing committee for
CPM 2012 and
SPIRE 2008.
I occasionally review papers for the
following venues.
Supervision
Bella Zhukova (PhD, U. Helsinki, current)
Saska Dönges (PhD, U. Helsinki, current)
Yan Zhengtong (PhD, U. Helsinki, current, co-supervied with Jiaheng Lu)
Aki Uhtoslahti (MSc, U. Helsinki, current)
Arttu Kilpinen (MSc, U. Helsinki, current)
Pekka Jylha-Ollila (MSc, U. Helsinki, 2020)
Antti Karjalainen (MSc, U. Helsinki, 2020)
Lauri Heino (MSc, U. Helsinki, 2020)
Risto Haapasalmi (MSc, U. Helsinki, 2020)
Juusi Timmonen (MSc, U. Helsinki, 2020)
Joonas Nietosvaara (MSc, U. Helsinki, 2019)
Christopher Hoobin (PhD, RMIT, 2015, now at NASDAQ)
Jasbir Dhaliwal (PhD, RMIT, 2014, now at Monash U., formerly at IBM)
Alex Bowe (MSc, RMIT, 2013, now at Cruise Automation, PhD from U. Tokyo)
Shanika Kuruppu (PhD, U. Melbourne, 2013, now at Google)
Funding/Grants
I hold or have held grants from the Academy of Finland, the National Science Foundation (NSF), and EU Horizon 2020, Royal Society, the Australian Research Council (ARC), and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS).
(recent) Teaching
I will run the
Data Compression seminar course (website under construction) in spring 2019.
With
Juha Kärkkäinen, I ran the
Data Compression seminar course in spring 2017.
I looked after the
Combinatorial Pattern Matching seminar course in autumn 2015.
With
Travis Gagie, I taught
Data Compression Techniques in spring 2015.
With
Travis Gagie and
Juha Kärkkäinen, I looked after the
Advanced Data Structures seminar course in autumn 2014.
Life
I try to travel overseas as much as possible.
I enjoy listening to
Shintaro Sakamoto,
Arvo Part,
Colleen,
Boards of Canada, and various other music.
I love reading.
Science on the
Edge.
The
Long Now Foundation.
The Saws by Robert Pinsky.
First Idyll by Susan Stewart.
Next Door and
I Took Out the Part by Jessica Greenbaum.
Solitaire by Deborah Landau.
On Friendship by Hagit Grossman.
